U.S. Pat. No. 2,693,665 discusses culturing Agaricus campestris in citrus juice, pear juice, asparagus juice, “organic material”, a carbohydrate, a nitrogen source and any combination of these materials optionally supplemented with urea and/or various ammonium salts to produce a mycelium for use as a foodstuff.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,761,246 discloses a method for the production of submerged Morchella esculenta and Helvellaceae spp. mycelium for human food. This document discusses the use of various molasses solutions as media with ammonium salt supplements. The patent discloses that added calcium carbonate or calcium sulfate acts as hyphal sphere nucleation sites, increasing biomass yield 30 fold.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,928,210 discloses a method to produce mushroom mycelium from sulfite liquor waste media supplemented with organic and inorganic salts.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,086,320 discloses a method to improve the flavor of submerged mycelium of Morchella esculenta, Helvella gigas, Coprinus comatus, and Agaricus campestris, by growing the strains in a media that “must contain, in water, a carbohydrate as a source of energy, a source of nitrogen and suitable minerals”, and includes recipes comprising milk, which is claimed to improve yield and flavor of mycelium when used properly.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,071,973 discusses culturing conditions for Basidiomycetes. Fungus is inoculated and grown in inorganic nutrient salts for nitrogen, phosphate and potassium, mixed with sucrose at 50-70 g/L and supplemented with fine powder of “crushed sugarcane, sugarcane bagasse, pine tree-tissue and wheat bran” at 0.2-15 g/L. Oxygen is controlled at 30-90% (v/v) to the media, the vessel pressurized at 0.12-0.5 MPa (17.4-72.5 psi) with oxygen supplied at 0.1-1.0 L/minute. Salts used include ammonium nitrate, sodium phosphate, magnesium sulfate heptahydrate, iron (II) sulfate heptahydrate and dipotassium hydrogen phosphate. Creative air pressure cycles are discussed and controlled with a pressure regulator. An alternative engineering scheme would use a back-pressure regulator, with a pressure regulator on the air receiver tank supplying the air.
Organizations around the world have been diligently looking for novel bitter blockers. Only a handful of patents on bitter blockers have been filed, and many are on synthetic compounds or rely on permutations of a basis molecular motif, see, e.g., EP2570035A1, U.S. Pat. No. 4,154,862, U.S. Pat. No. 5,631,292, U.S. Pat. No. 6,265,012, U.S. Pat. No. 7,939,671, US20080226788A1, US20100227039A1, US20020177576, US20110086138 and WO2008119197A1.
Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana) has been used by human societies for thousands of years as a folk medicine and sweetener. Today many countries grow the plant, including Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Israel. The FDA labeled both rebaudioside A and stevioside as Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS), resulting in a number of stevia extract food additives entering the United States market. The term “stevia” is generally used to refer to the leaves and/or plant parts, either fresh or dried, or an extract/decoction/syrup of Stevia rebaudiana leaf, either crude or further purified to specific glycosides, the term “stevia” as used henceforth used in this document can refer to any of these forms of the plant. The compounds responsible for the sweet taste and metallic and bitter aftertaste of S. rebaudiana are known as the steviol glycosides. 10 have been identified in total, and the class of compounds is marked by various glycosylated, rhamnosylated, and xylated forms of the aglycone diterpene steviol.
To produce steviol glycosides, stevia plants are dried and subjected to an extraction process. The various glycosides can be obtained in different purities via crystallization with various solvents such as methanol or ethanol, by column chromatography, or filtration.
Various methods have been employed to alter the taste profile of green tea. Fermented teas have been consumed for hundreds of years, though this has always been conducted with environmental flora. Teas are fermented typically no shorter than three months, and sometimes as long as 50 years.
What is desired is a way of manufacturing a food product, such as, for example, stevia or tea that achieves a good tasting product while reducing the taste defects. Thus, a need remains in the art for products having reduced levels of undesirable taste components and/or increased levels of flavor and/or health promoting components relative to stevia or tea, and for methods of obtaining such products. The present invention is directed toward overcoming one or more of the problems discussed above.